_March 8th._
... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want
of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that
young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the
dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily
than those who preceded them. And such deaths often represent more than
a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne
bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,--a
relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest
idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its
life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to
carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;--and in many cases she has the
additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays
with the white children,--shares their pleasures and presents. She is
very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a
servitor: she has a pet name;--she is allowed much familiarity,--is
often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company
present, and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs
very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with
all necessary clothing;--she rarely wears shoes;--she sleeps on a little
straw mattress (_paillasse_) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse
supported upon an "elephant" (_léfan_)--two thick square pieces of hard
mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal
expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse,
the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,--everything, in short, except cook
and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part
with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the
household, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she
leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune
afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will
perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old
roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs;
yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the
formation of creole society--to the early period of slavery. Among the
Latin races,--especially the French,--slavery preserved in modern times
many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique
world,--where the domestic slave, entering the _famillia_, actually
became a member of it.